Highway of Tears

 

“A documentary looking into the missing and murdered women along a 724 kilometre stretch of highway in Northern British Columbia”

 

A documentary film by LA-based, Canadian filmmakers Matt Smiley and Carly Pope

Women in Film & Television Vancouver, Film Festival – Best Documentary Award

Narrated by Nathan Fillion, “Highway of Tears” chronicles the notorious, decades-long string of murders and disappearances of young Aboriginal women along British Columbia’s Highway 16, and how the systemic racism that defined their lives also contributed to their deaths. Since the late 1960s, at least eighteen young women — many of them from disadvantaged First Nations communities — have disappeared or been found murdered along the 724-kilometre stretchof Highway 16 in northern British Columbia.

 None of these cold cases were ever solved until 2012, when a special RCMP investigation was able to link DNA from one of the murder victims to deceased US criminal Bobby Jack Fowler; but this single answer has done little to heal the wounds of Aboriginal communities who have seen dozens of their young women vanish along the “Highway of Tears,” victims not only of murderous predators but of the systemic racism of a federal government that keeps them trapped on impoverished reservations and, as critics charge, evinced little interest in apprehending their killers. “Highway of Tears” not only movingly relates the personal stories of the victims, but investigates how the legacy of generational poverty, high unemployment and endemic violence in their communities contributed to their tragic fates — and how contemporary First Nations leaders are striving to cure those ills.

Highway of Tears website here

Highway of Tears Facebook page here

Highway of Tears Twitter here

 

Prince George, BC: March 2015 TBC

Prince Rupert, BC: March 20, 2015 (location to be confirmed)

Toronto, ON: Special Speaker, NDP MP Niki Ashton – March 27, 2015, 115 Simpson Ave

Peterborough: March 29, 2015 – Otonabee College Trent U

Philadelphia, USA (April 8)

Montreal, QC : Musée des beaux arts – April 10, 2015

St. John’s, NFLD: April 17 & 18, 2015

Halifax, NS: Benefit Screening for Loretta Saunders – April 20 & 21, 2015

Whitehorse (April)

Halifax, NS: Benefit Screening for Loretta Saunders – April 20 & 21, 2015
Whitehorse: (April)

 

 

 

“Inspiring Documentary to Screen at Vancouver Int’l Women in Film Festival

One eagerly awaited feature screening at #VIWIFF2015 is the award-winning documentary Highway of Tears by Canadian expats, director-producer Matt Smiley and producer Carly Pope.

The documentary relates the personal stories of many of the missing and murdered, primarily aboriginal women along the 724-kilometre stretch of Highway 16 in northern BC. It premiered at TIFF 2014 and has consequently screened at several festivals.”

Review quoted from http://reelwest.com/news/2015-02/highway-tears-puts-murdered-and-missing-women-focus

 

Best Documentary winner at the Women in Film & Television Vancouver Film Festival 2015

Best Documentary winner at the Malibu Film Festival  2014

Best of the Festival winner at the Zonta Film Festival 2014